Open Access News

• Declan Butler, Introduction
• Sally Morris, Open access and not-for-profit publishers
• Karen Hunter, Open Access: yes, no, maybe
• Mark Ware, Universities' own electronic repositories yet to impact on Open Access
• Patrick Brown, PLoS co-founder defends free dissemination of peer-reviewed journals online
• Donald Kennedy, Science editor-in-chief warns of PLoS growing pains

This is Nature's second OA debate on OA. The first, from 2001, is still online and still recommended.

ePrints are only part of the wider repository debate. It is quite clear that the main issue in populating repositories is a cultural and political one and not a technical issue. This has been reinforced by the presentations at the third OAI conference in Geneva and the Open Access conference in Southampton on February 19. There is a mismatch between the zeal of the open access advocates...and the vast majority of the academic community. I've called this the sound of one hand clapping! [...]

I see ePrints and ePresses as being part of a seamless process. The work of Dr Roy Tennant at California needs to be recognised here as providing a future model through California's eScholarship as well as the Columbia eGutenberg project. As long as one can search in a federated manner then a repository can hold all manner of material for example peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed, grey literature, digital theses, free electronic monographs and commercial books. [...]

The debate on open access is a huge and confused one. Just to keep up with the writings of Professor Stevan Harnad and Professor Peter Suber's Open Access Bloglet is almost a fulltime job! The response of publishers to the current UK House of Commons Inquiry reflects a myriad of views towards the Open Access issue but we are still in very early days. I would think for Elsevier that Open Access is still only a very small cloud flitting across the blue sky of profits. Until the academic community become involved in the debate at an individual or institutional level I feel that, despite the publicity, that the ground is only going to shift slowly.

Update: See the press release.

despite the need of researchers to protect not only their patients but also their competitive interests, the leaders of these bioinformatics initiatives have been gratified by the positive attitudes to data sharing encountered so far on both sides of the Atlantic. Next, and sooner rather than later, comes the challenge of extending cancer bioinformatics collaboration across the disparate research and health systems of Europe.

The NCRI also published a "statement of intent" in the same issue of Nature.

Update (3/18/04): Stephen Pincock, Cancer Data Initiative Launched, The Scientist, March 18, 2004, has more on the NCRI project and comments from NCRI and NCI officials.

We applaud the publishers who have signed the D.C. Principles for their commitment to free access to peer-reviewed research literature where they conclude it is feasible. [...]

Open access is our goal for scientific and scholarly communication because it facilitates the open discussion needed to accelerate research, share knowledge, and enlarge human understanding. The goal is so desirable -- for science itself and for researchers, universities, libraries, journals, publishers, learned societies, foundations, governments, and citizens -- that any problems we encounter in pursuing it are worth solving. Our organizations stand ready to work toward solutions in cooperation with the signatories of the D.C. Principles.

(PS: Full disclosure. I'm affiliated with two of the groups issuing the response and participated in its drafting.)

• Selected important articles of interest are free online from the time of publication;
• The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher's business and publishing requirements;
• The content of our journals is available free to scientists working in many low-income nations;
• Articles are made available free online through reference linking between these journals;
• Our content is available for indexing by major search engines so that readers worldwide can easily locate information.

The signatories assert that "publication fees should not be borne solely by researchers and their funding institutions, because the ability to publish in scientific journals should be available equally to all scientists worldwide, no matter what their economic circumstances....[W]e believe that a free society allows for the co-existence of many publishing models." For more detail, see the page of background information, the press release, or the media advisory.